another reason theres so few still around is blackjack and other games took all their winnings and made them say to hell with it all

I'm willing to be wrong, but I believe 1% is a widely accepted number for the amount of winning players. To be fair, I have not personally polled every player on the planet and done the math.

YMMV.

Pensfan,

I don’t any of this to be mean or slander you (I’m a pens fan too). From your other postings I gather that you are successful in your career and many of the things you do. I think you are some kind of supervisor or boss right? I think you likely have poker entitlement issues and think because you have played a lot of poker and are probably smarter than the vast majority of opponents you should automatically win. When you don’t, especially when you lose as a favorite or to an idiot, I think you probably tilt hard, play bad and lose way more playing your D or F game than you do before you get sucked out on. I think it’s all mental. I think all poker players have gone through this at some point. The good ones figure this out and adjust.

Seems like you’re saying it’s just a game of luck. You can make the same argument for a game like roulette.

Are you saying people like Andrew Neeme are just lucky? Would you go as far as saying Phil Ivey couldn’t beat 1-2 NL after 2k hours if he happens to be on the unluckier side?

Are you saying he plays poorly on live streams? He seems to lose more often than not (he has said this) on live streams. I would say he's on the wrong side of variance on the limited amount of live steams he's played.

It would seem you are saying it's variance/running poor when losing and skill when winning.

I don't take anything as mean or insulting, even if it's meant that way. That's mostly a good read on me personally, but I really don't think I have any entitlement issues when it comes to poker. I even started a thread a while back on here offering insight into the mind of the world's worst avid player (me).

I don't think I have a D or an F game, I don't think I have an A game either, I just play how I play. I honestly don't play that much anymore because I came to the realization it just wan't fun setting buy in after buy in on fire. It really wasn't the dollars lost, it just wasn't any fun anymore sitting down realizing the only possible outcome was losing, it was just a matter of how spectacular the hand was.


Otherwise, fellow Pens fan, I'm still not over Washington winning the Cup this past season. I've seen every Cup celebration for the past 40+ years except this one. I even stayed in the building in 08 when Detroit won it here in Pittsburgh to watch them carry it around. I can't bring myself to seeing Tom Wilson lift it over his neanderthal head. Let's hope it doesn't happen again, ever.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re just pulling our leg. You act like it’s a bad thing to give him credit for his skill when he wins, even though he has won for years and moved up in stakes because he was winning.

Of course it’s variance/running poor when losing because he has a long history of winning. If he had a long history of losing I would say he is a losing player.

And why did you avoid my question? Also, do you think Phil Ivey would win at 1-2 if he played 2k hours and happened to be on the unluckier side?

FWIW, and based upon observation over years of running an online poker network. I would question that "less than 1%" figure for active winning poker players, even accounting for the folks who quit poker quickly because they lost their initial few sessions.

I avoided it because I don't have an answer you would likely accept. Of course the overwhelming answer if this was a pole is that he would crush souls and steal girlfriends along the way, but the truth is I don't know, and neither do you.

It seems you are asking if I think he has enough skill to overcome running poorly. If that is the question then no is the answer. Nobody can outplay running poorly.

Do I think, at any stakes for any amount of time, Phil Ivey would make better decisions and better reads than I do? Of course I do.

Old article, pre BF, but still interesting. Although from SS, I specifically asked if this was for tournament players only or if it included cash games, and was told it included cash games.

http://sharkscopers.com/what-fractio...s-are-winners/



edit:
oh, updated in 2014 (fewer winners by this time and says that it is tournament players only)

http://sharkscopers.com/what-fractio...inners-part-2/

Derail cliffs: pensfan thinks (wrongly) that skill < luck in poker.

Thankfully Andrew and Brad have saved us with new vlogs!

ITT, pensfan has proven himself many times over to be a very dense, level 1 thinker when it comes to all things poker. And that's ok. He seems like a nice enough guy, but completely wrong more often than not. You cannot convince these types. They will just backtrack and have some type of roundabout response that rides the fence of the argument... everytime someone makes a valid point against him.

Trooper gives us more fodder in latest vlog.

This new vlogger is pretty entertaining. Not from Vegas, and poker is only part of his vlog but he's the only real degen vlogger I've seen.



Parkour FTW.

(No I'm not him.)

getting coaching to try to beat LLSNL is like getting a college degree to go work at McDonalds.

I bet many of their corporate and executive level jobs require college degrees

Here is the problem with coaching and LLSNL:

1) boredom

2) the ability to change our own mindset.

Our coach can gel us 1,000 times to fold to a 3-bet or a shove .... and we can listen to him - for a week, or two. And then we inevitably fall back into our own bad habits.

I have played live poker for 8.5 years. I got coaching in December of 2017. Did it work? No. Did it help? Yes. Do I still revert back to bad habits? Yes.

Here is all the coaching you really need to beat 1/2:

1) Fold pre
2) Fold pre
3) Fold to aggression
4) Don’t get fancy.
5) Don’t bluff calling stations
6) Don’t call against a nit.
7) Fold pre

I'm not sure I have ever disagreed with any of this. In rebuttal, you seem like someone who is never wrong and any opposing point of view is 100% wrong 100% of the time. Thus, it's hard to have these type of discussions with you as you are not open to any other point of view than your own.

As I/we have derailed the thread enough perhaps a compromise on the issue is in order? How about this, not everyone can be coached to be a winning player (I'm living proof) but coaching can improve everyone's game and some to the point of profitability?

Fair enough?

Also if only 1 percent of 1/3 players are winning then they are all living in Las Vegas

Bingo! This is it chief.

This is very difficult to quantify, because what is a "winning player"?
Is it someone who is above even? For a year? For a lifetime?
Is it someone who can support themself by just playing poker?

I consider myself a winning player. I have averaged winning 8K a year for the last 8 years. Can I quit my real job? Nope! But it is sure nice to be PLUS and help pay the college bills! To me, THAT is winning!!

Up $1 per year is winning

1. Are you defining a winning player as something other than being above breakeven? Maybe 1% are able to earn a comfortable living from live 1/3 but far more than 1% are winning players in the literal sense that they win more than they lose. The higher stakes you go the higher percentage of winning players due to minimized impact of rake, but even at the 1/3 and 1/2 level I would say at least 10% are winning players.

2. And the reason why more people don't invest in coaching is simple. The return isn't worth it. Most people who can be coached into becoming winning poker players are also able to earn far more money by doing things other than poker. If a kid came to me today and asked if he is better off going to a coding academy or investing an equivalent amount of time getting coached to crush 2/5 I am going to tell him to go to coding academy everytime. 100K salary plus benefits and usually stock options is going to beat the crap out of playing poker for the vast majority of winning players.

1% seems low. it's probably closer to 10% and even higher when you just take people who have pursued the game seriously.

What ever happened with Andrew Neeme’s tournament challenge? Wasn’t he planning on playing on every continent and winning 100k? Did he quit this or is it on hold? I like the vlogs more when they are traveling.